The Art of Practice

Through the Practice of Art

Diary — 24 April 2017:

I wish I had practiced the guitar better. Not more, but better. I wish I had practiced the 5 instruments I picked up, better. Not more, but better.

What I’m glad about is that I’m practicing singing better. At least I’m doing something better. I hope.

I remember how I used to practice playing the guitar for hours at a stretch. I was doing it rather mindlessly back then. My focus wasn’t where it should have been. My entire concentration wasn’t directed at the guitar.

I was doing two things wrong. One was not making my practice interesting enough. The other was practicing without awareness. Both of these are interrelated. I’m trying to do both while singing now.

If I needed to practice an exercise on the guitar, like scales, I would play through a scale without trying to make it fun. Sometimes, all you need to have fun is to see things in a different way. Novelty can turn into fun. All I needed to do was try to see the current exercise in the bigger picture.

Learning happens when association happens. A scale is not just a sequence of finger positions. It is endowed with notes and emotion. I wasn’t trying to look beneath the surface of what I was playing.

Instead of zombieing my way through a scale, I could see how each note affects the mood of the scale. I could try to skip a note now and then to see the effect it would have. I could stay on one note longer than another to see how the added emphasis changed the feeling. I could have varied my picking and dynamics to see the effect they would have on the tonality. Even something like a scale is bursting with the life of music.

I was keeping myself ignorant of everything that was right within my grasp.

The more I would notice about what I was playing, the more interesting my practice would become. Walking along a road can become boring after a while. Looking around at all the shops, the streetlights and the people, walking can turn into an adventure in awareness.

A greater awareness could lead to the process being much more fun. The way I practice the guitar now is radically different from earlier. It is mindful.

The engine for my growth as a musician is my curiosity. If I let that die, my music dies as well. Discovery, whether personal or not, has become a very important part of my musical journey. I’m curious about whatever sound I come across, whichever exercise I try, whatever notes I play. My curiosity propels me to find out what’s really hiding underneath, and every time I lift the veil of sound to see what’s beneath, I find a treasure trove of music.

Curiosity about something as simple as why I prefer a style of music to another has taught me so much. In such things, I need to find my own answers. Empirical studies certainly help, but each person is different, and all the answers are already within. I just need to look.

Associating music practice with things I learn in other domains like origami or sketching or swimming has been a personal victory of sorts. Looking at all skills as branches on the same tree can be a revelatory experience.

At all times though, I need to be aware of doing one thing and one thing only. Practice needs to be a focused experience. I need to be devoted to it single-mindedly.

When I do this, the same focus shows up in my performances as well. Practice is no longer a separate activity that is devoid of the performance element. Practice is performance. And performance is practice.

The soul of the music reveals itself to me and the audience when I am immersed in what I am doing. Each practice session becomes a full-fledged concert. Likewise, anytime I’m playing for an audience, I continue to learn. It is not an isolated event meant to be trivialised as a display.

Whether I’m learning from practice or performance, repetition with awareness makes a difference. A huge difference. The first 20 times I try something new, it’s hard to get right at its innards, but repeating it with intention and curiosity hundreds or thousands of times, I become more aware of its nature. I begin to experience what I’m doing. It is not an activity but an act.

It is the difference between marvelling at the beauty of a house and living in it. It is the difference between knowing about and knowing.

The most important thing I’ve learned, which I wish I thought about more often in those early years with the guitar, is always remembering that practice and performance are always about music. It’s easy to focus on the specifics of what I’m doing and forget that everything I’m doing is motivated by my desire to make music. Not getting a scale robotically correct is no big deal. Not nailing the rhythm is not an entire disaster in itself. The question is: Am I always learning?

The world of music encompasses much more than the rules we make. Music is by our design. I have to find my way through this design and make changes where I feel they are needed. I understand design by practicing and I make changes to what’s in place once I have understood the essence through practice. I express my understanding of the design through performance.

I hope I can live by what I’ve learned so far. The only way I know of doing that is to make some music. Everything else is just for inspiration.

When words fail, Music speaks.

_/\_

Around Sound turns my personal experiences with music, both as a musician and as a listener, into stories.

Improve your sense of rhythm (How I improved my sense of rhythm: Part 1,Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) as you read about my journey through the world of rhythm. How’s that for combining a lesson and a story into one? :D

Get a better grasp on notes with my 3-part How I learned to speak with notesseries: Melody, Harmony and Connection

You might even find these interesting:
The Sound of Water, The Mirror in the Music and The Voice of a Story

You can have a look at all my articles here: Anirudh Venkatesh